Soccer, Round 2

The 10 year old friend I made on the train. She was so excited when she learned that I was going to the soccer game too, and everytime I talked to her she would rush back to her dad and tell him exactly what I had said. So adorable!

Hiya! It's been a while since I've last posted. A combination of busy school schedules and the fact that pictures take so long to upload has kept me. It's been a busy but lovely week. We went to another soccer game last Saturday, this time with many more people (all pictures are from said game), had our second family dinner on Wednesday, and I did my first round of volunteering on Friday.

We are required to do 15 hours of volunteer work in the term, and Jason has wonderfully arranged for us to teach kids in an after school YMCA program on Friday nights. Our lesson plan revolved around the head/shoulders/kneesandtoes game (most of the children are 3rd through 5th graders) and teaching the kids the five senses. We sang the song in a big group and then broke off by grades and went into classrooms for the lesson. Brandon, Zack, and I were paired with the fourth graders and luckily there were only four of them, so we were only slightly out numbered. I have found that kids are kids, no matter what country they're from. Lots of jumping, yelling, and general tomfoolery abounded as we tried to get them to learn the vocab words through games and 'quizzes'. They all seemed very interested in my tattoos and hair, touching (and smelling) them. I told them they could if they got their vocab words right :) It was a fun if not tiring night, although I did manage to trip down some stairs and roll my ankle. My clumsiness seems to be even more pronounced on the uneven sidewalks of China.

Wednesday saw the second family dinner at Vivan's house, and we made pasta! My cousins Victoria and Johnny sent me my mom's pasta sauce recipe (they're in the Czech Republic at the moment) and we borrowed the toaster oven from the Flagship office. The sauce turned out great, though all in all it was a bit pricey (by that I mean everyone had to pay ~7 dollars for dinner. China has made me so cheap). Just as wonderfully, we got to make garlic bread in the toaster oven using my old roommate Amanda's awesome recipe. It was a buttery, garlicy, toasted bundle of deliciousness!

Now to the soccer game!! It was such a great time. We got around 15 people this time, which was an interesting project getting through the subways and all crowding to get tickets etc. So many people were taking pictures of us, it probably didn't help that four of us were in soccer jerseys like real Chinese people :P We were in the fan section again and stood on chairs cheering the whole time!

 

The two other fan clubs. The bottom one is the other fan club for the Santy's (we were much bigger and more rambunctious), and on the top is the Shanghai team's fan club.

Shiraz ended up standing on one of the platforms with the Pakistani flag as a cape waving a scarf (one of the players is Pakistani, so is Shiraz)

The crowd during half time

We scored the first goal in the first half, but they caught up in the second!

The riot patrol enjoying the game

 

We scored a second goal in the second half...

 

And then a third!

Lone soldier

A bunch of us with a super chill police man. 

 The riot police came out at the end of the game, I guess they didn't want us to rush the field

We were a very excited bunch :)

Even though they scored a point on us, it didn't matter...

Because we had won!

Back at the train station, victory!

This week is 国庆节, the Chinese nationalist holiday. What does that mean for us? A week off! Camping plans fell through in part because of the weather (it has been rainy for a while, I love it, reminds me of home!) so instead I'm going to hang out around Nanjing and visit Lily's home! I'm very excited and more pictures are to come! Love,

Maggie